This week we collected 134 stories on ArtsJournal.com. [subscribe] Here's what I learned: The whether-AI-can-make-art debate is by now a well-worn trope. It's actually a tedious question. If we still haven't been able to come up with a definitive answer to the age-old college dorm room question "what is art" then how are we supposed to be able to judge whether AI can make it? A small study … [Read more...]
Archives for 2026
AJ Chronicles: How to Fight the Slop
This week we collected 128 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: We are drowning in slop. That's essentially the diagnosis in Derek Thompson's sharp essay this week on what he calls "zombie flow," the algorithmic compulsion to produce vast quantities of content nobody particularly wants. Streaming platforms commissioning shows designed not to be great but to fill a queue. Studios … [Read more...]
From Messages to Conversations: AI Agents are Changing how we Find Culture
In the last six months, we've seen a surge in traffic at ArtsJournal. That's great, right? But when I looked at server logs, we found that 70 percent of that surge was machines —bots— not people. We aren't alone. According to recent reports, automated traffic hit 51 percent of global web activity in December 2025, the first time in a decade that machines outnumbered people online. AI and large … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Excellence Problem and Why it Matters
This week we collected 113 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: Next month, the French-Canadian harpsichordist Jean Rondeau will perform the Goldberg Variations three different ways in a single concert: solo keyboard in the traditional manner; arranged for strings, flute, and continuo; and a third approach he hasn't yet revealed. In an interview with Bachtrack this week, he was asked: … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: Why Tech Infrastructure is Becoming the Most Important Arts Story of 2026
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. This week we collected 112 stories. Here's what I learned: What does it actually take for culture to reach an audience? A musician records a … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: What Habermas Feared for our Public Sphere
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. To support our work, sign up at Patreon or subscribe to our Substack newsletter. This week we collected 118 … [Read more...]
What Ireland’s Basic Artist Income Experiment tells us about a new Arts Economy
In music, a ground bass is a repeating line in the lowest register — stable, unhurried, underneath everything — that gives performers freedom to improvise above it. It doesn't dictate what you play, but it anchors it, giving shape to the music and making what's above it possible. Ireland just built one for artists. After a three-year pilot that put €325 a week with no strings attached into … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Biggest Fights about Culture
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. To support our work, sign up at Patreon or subscribe to our Substack newsletter. This week we collected 118 stories. Here's what I … [Read more...]
Paramount and Live Nation/Ticketmaster Won Big Last Week: Here’s why Orchestras and Theatres (and Consumers) Lost
Two huge culture industry deals in the past week, both in entertainment, and maybe they don't seem connected. Certainly not connected to non-profit arts. But these are exactly the kinds of culture infrastructure deals that should worry anyone in the commercial or non-profit culture business because they impact us all. Here's why. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery signed a merger agreement … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: “Future Vision” and what the Boston Symphony signaled this week
This week we collected 123 stories at ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: The Boston Symphony's board didn't fire Andris Nelsons as its music director. Not exactly. They declined to renew his contract because he and the BSO weren't "aligned on future vision" — the board's own words, offered without apology. Not artistic differences. Not budget. Not performance. Future vision. That phrase is … [Read more...]
Did the Supreme Court just unleash the Era of Radioactive Artist IP?
This morning the Supreme Court denied cert in the AI copyright case Thaler v. Perlmutter, with no dissent noted. A computer scientist had listed his AI system as the sole author of an artwork and tried to copyright it. Every court said no and that the Copyright Act requires a human author. The Supremes let this judgment stand. The creative world will treat this as a victory. Human authorship … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Battles for Who gets to say what Culture Is
Two stories this week add up to something important when placed side-by-side. Congressional Republicans introduced a bill to nationalize book banning, which would give federal authorities sweeping powers to purge school and public library collections of content they don't like. In the second, a volunteer group called Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian has spent thousands of hours photographing … [Read more...]
When “Better Than” meets “Good Enough”
Maybe you've seen the video below this week? It features the latest robotics by a Chinese robotics firm harnessed for a demonstration at this year's Spring Festival Gala. Give it a minute. I'll wait. Having seen the videos of dancing robots by Boston Robotics at MIT, I'm blown away by this. Also unsettled. The robots are incredible. And also: are they? What does incredible even mean here? … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: Metropolitan Opera as Poster Child
The Metropolitan Opera announced its 2026–27 season this week, and the headline takeaway is this: 17 productions. The fewest in a full season since the company moved into Lincoln Center in 1966. More than a third of all performances will be Aida, La Bohème, or Tosca. Peter Gelb, whose long tenure has been marked by entrepreneurial ambition and significant financial struggle, simultaneously … [Read more...]
The Middleware Manifesto: A Proposal for Rebuilding American Culture
In my last post, Why the Death of American Leadership may run through your Local Orchestra, I argued that the struggles of institutions like orchestras and newspapers aren't a series of isolated but mounting failures but a systemic breakdown in the civic middle, the connective tissue that holds communities together. It's happening not only across the arts but across our political, civic and … [Read more...]